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CommonMark Ready Reference

Tutorial and hacks to create documents using the new MarkDown standard

MarkDown is an easy human-readable text format that can serve as a strong base for exporting to other document formats such as HTML, ODF, DOC/DOCX, PDF and ebook (EPUB, MOBI…). It is a great tool for authors, technical writers and content developers to create books, manuals, web pages and other rich-text content.

CommonMark is a new well-formed standard for the old MarkDown spec. CommonMark was one of the reasons I was able to write and design 21 books in one year. Incidentally, this is the first-ever book on CommonMark. You will be buying a piece of history! This book's covers are designed like a quick reference card - a free PDF download is also available for anyone.

About CommonMark

CommonMark Ready Reference endorsed by CodingHorror

Despite its phenomenal success online and widespread adoption even beyond the Internet, one problem that continued to bug Markdown was the lack of a proper standard. Today, CommonMark (https://www.CommonMark.org) is replacing Markdown as the de facto standard for low-markup text. CommonMark hit the ground with a well-defined standard from Day 1 and is set to replace and overtake MarkDown. StackOverFlow.com and other sites have already adopted it. CommonMark is MarkDown done right. It is highly compatible with the original MarkDown and resolves most of its ambiguities. The book CommonMark Ready Reference provides a tutorial, hacks collection and a ready reference for the new standard.

The Book

CommonMark Ready Reference is for those who need a desk-side reference and for those who would like to learn MarkDown/CommonMark at leisure. If you are on a computer, there will be plenty of free online alternatives available including the official documentation.

This book is based on 0.31.2 version of CommonMark specification (released in January 2024). It may be superseded by newer versions. Whatever the case, the official documentation that is directly applicable to the version of Markdown/CommonMark that you use in production will always have more relevance.

Table of contents

The Executables

Terminal screenshot

Anyone can build CommonMark from its source code available at https://github.com/commonmark/cmark. I built my CommonMark executables (for Linux and Windows) using cmark version 0.31.1 (released in August 2024). This conforms to CommonMark specification 0.31.2 (released in January 2024). You can use them at your own risk.

Download
commonmark-executables-linux-n-windows.zip
for Linux and Windows 0.5 MB

The commands I used to build cmark executables from source are given in the book. They were based on steps given at: https://github.com/commonmark/cmark/blob/master/README.md

Free CommonMark/MarkDown Quick-Reference Chart (Printable PDF)

The covers of the paperback are designed as a quick-reference card. Inside the book, there is another b/w quick reference card. I have provided it here as a free PDF download in full-colour. You can print as many copies as you want without buying the book.

Download
commonmark-quick-reference.pdf
for Linux and Windows 0.12 MB MB

Video Demos

These videos show how writing my manuscripts in CommonMark has helped me in automating my book-creation process for both the paperback and ebook forms.